


The Plan

by wolfy_writing



Series: The Plan [1]
Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 17:42:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2590484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfy_writing/pseuds/wolfy_writing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's a kind of safety in being a man with nothing left to lose.  I imagine you thought you were safe."</p><p>AU from before Season Six</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Plan

Patrick Jane had barely begun to wake up when he heard a voice.

"Hello, Tiger. Like the accommodations?"

Patrick looked around. It was a small cell, with damp concrete walls. Judging by the dampness and the temperature, it was probably a converted basement. Not a room with plumbing, judging by the small chamber pot in the corner. The door, reinforced steel, looked professionally installed. It had no handle or locks on the inside, just a small shuttered slot at the bottom to pass the pot through , and a tiny window. That should leave a paper trail. Lisbon would find it eventually, and when she did, she'd track it down until she got Patrick out.

If Patrick wanted to kill Red John before she got there, he'd have to work quickly.

"You think this will break me? Locking me up? Is that the wost you can do? Because I'll find a way out of here. And when I do..."

"It'll be too late." Red John grinned through the window. "Even you shouldn't be able to find a way out of this for at least six weeks. There's a kind of safety in being a man with nothing left to lose. I imagine you thought you were safe. But I know better. And while you're locked up here, your little team, your...family, one might almost say, will be outside. And I will pick them off one by one, while you fail to protect them." He closed the slot. "Sweet dreams."

\---

The first thing he thought of was the food. There was bound to be regular food delivery. Red John wouldn't leave Patrick to starve.

No, that would be too easy.

A slow con would be more certain, but he didn't have time to waste. Wait to build up a rapport, and by the time he made it out, Van Pelt might be dead.

Or Cho. He thought Red John would go for Cho first. Cho, then Van Pelt so Rigsby would suffer. Then Rigsby, then Lisbon.

He'd save Lisbon for last. She'd see it as her job to protect her team, so every death would hit her hard. She'd be more frantic to protect everyone, and suffer more as she failed.  By the time Red John went after her, she'd be haunted by the sense she'd failed everyone. 

So quick and dirty and hoping it worked was the way Patrick needed to go.

\---

"I can't eat that!" he said, as the food tray slid through. "No, seriously, I can't," he lied. "I've got celiac disease. The bread will make me sick. Keep giving it to me, and I'll die. Red John wouldn't want that, would he?"

The guard didn't speak, didn't even pause.

Patrick pushed the food tray to the side and began feeling at the slot in the door. There wasn't a bolt or seam in the metal or anything. He knocked at it experimentally. It was too solid to punch through.

Just in case, he scooted back and gave it a very careful kick.

Aside from the sharp pain in his ankle, nothing changed.

\---

The next food tray was some sloppy stew-type thing over rice. The guard could hear, spoke English, and was paying attention to what Patrick said.  That was useful.

"Thank you," Patrick Jane said. "Thank you." He passed out the uneaten tray from before.

\---

He groaned and writhed, clutching his stomach. That was probably unnecessary, but he'd rather be too thorough than find out they were watching the cell.

"Help," he groaned when the guard came near. "Please help. The food. I'm sick."

The guard shoved the tray of food through and walked away.

He was going to have to stage something that was more of an emergency.

\---

It was difficult to find a cutting edge in the cell. In the end, he had to scrape his leg against the wall until he bled.

He used some of the blood to daub "I can't save anyone" on the wall, then smeared the rest over his wrists. He slumped to the floor, then waited for the guard to arrive. Then he let out what sounded like a dying gasp.

The guard slid the new food tray in and left. Either they were monitoring the cell and knew everything, or they didn't care if he died. And he suspected they did care.

He wasn't going to be able to use a fake emergency.  It would have to be real.

\---

"Did he tell you who died yet? Does he update you on that?"

No response.

Eventually he curled up in a cold corner and fell asleep.

\---

"You know the legal consequences for being an accomplice to murder?"

Sloppy, he cursed himself afterward. Bad. He should be able to do better. But he'd been rushing things from the beginning, and made a complete mess of it.

Cho was probably dead by now.

If he anticipated correctly it would be Cho. If not, it might be Lisbon, to break the team's organizational structure, or Van Pelt because she seemed more obviously vulnerable, or Rigsby because he didn't.

None of those thoughts made him feel any better.

\---

"His accomplices don't survive, you know. He disposes of them. He'll dispose of you. You'll be lucky if the CBI finds you first. They might be able to protect you from him."

The food tray slid in and the guard walked away.

\---

After several more days the stench got to him, and he lined up all of the food trays so he could push them out at once.

"Please wait a moment. I've got a lot of garbage to get rid of." He pushed the tray out.

The window stayed open a bit longer, letting him get rid of all of the trays before the guard pushed in the new food tray and closed the window.

"You listen to that and you don't listen to anything else?" The guard wasn't deaf, obviously. He heard Patrick about the trays and the food. But none of the tricks worked.

Patrick was good at reading people. He could pick up on body language, word choices, how they dressed, all of the little details of normal interaction. But he wasn't getting any of that. He wasn't even getting a face or a voice.

By his best estimate, Van Pelt would be dead by now. Grace. Grace Van Pelt, who wore the print dresses that were more feminine than anyone would expect of a CBI agent, and was sweet and gentle and only a fighter when she needed to be.

Kimball Cho, who still carried himself like a soldier, slightly afraid that if he didn't keep himself in control, he'd become dangerous to innocent people. And a good man because he worried more about protecting innocents than anything else.

Wayne Rigsby, intelligent enough to understand fire, and brave enough to face it down.

And Teresa Lisbon, still trying to protect everyone by being efficient and responsible and facing down all problems squarely.

He'd promised he would always save her. A promise he might already have broken.

\---

"What do you want? I know you can hear me. I know you listen. I know you know that Red John is going to kill you after this is over. What is he offering you that's worth that. Does he have your family? He won't protect them. He won't give you anything for this in the end. All he does is take."

The tray slid through.

\---

"Is it the power? Do you enjoy it? Do you enjoy the killing? Is that what he promised you?"

The tray slid through.

\---

"My leg's infected. I think it needs medical attention." That was actually true. He'd been scraping it raw on the walls because he needed fresh blood to mark the time. A few days ago, he'd begun smearing it with the wastes from the chamber pot, hoping to start an infection. It might cost him his leg if he didn't get medical attention soon, but hesitating had already cost him nearly his entire team.

It was pure cowardice that had made him hesitate this long about risking his leg to save whoever survived.

The tray slid through. The guard walked away.

\---

Patrick sat clutching his leg and shivering. Sweat dripped from his face. "The infection's getting worse. You know this could kill me if it goes on. How do you think Red John will like that? If I die before he kills them all, he can't gloat. He won't like that at all. You don't want to cost him the chance to rub it in."

The guard shoved the food tray in.

Patrick crawled to the wall and drew a careful line in blood from his seeping leg wound. Then he sat and tried to count them. It took him five tries, since they kept swimming. But in the end he came to the answer.

Forty-two.

Forty-two days. Six weeks. They were all dead.

He let out a long raw scream, and began to punch at the wall frantically, wildly, smashing his fists against the bricks.

He collapsed and passed out some point after breaking the bones in his hands.

\---

Lisbon paced outside the door. "How long?"

The locksmith bent down. "Just a few minutes. It'll be sooner if you stay quiet." Lisbon bit her lip. Patrick Jane had been missing over six weeks, the same six weeks when Red John had tried to kill everyone on the investigative team.

If he wasn't in the cell, he was almost certainly dead by now. If he was, why wouldn't he answer?

The door swung open, and Lisbon saw.

"Jane!" Lisbon ran forward. "God, Jane!" She bent down.

He was lying on the floor, shivering, smeared with blood and filth. He didn't look up at the sound of her voice, or the touch of her hand.

"Ma'am, we need to get him to the hospital." An EMT touched her gently on the shoulder.

"Of course." She stepped back as they loaded him on the stretcher.

Her eyes fell on the words written on the wall. "I can't save anyone." Written in dried blood.

She pulled out her radio. "Cho, Rigsby, Van Pelt, meet me at the hospital."

"What's wrong?" asked Van Pelt. "Is Jane okay?"

Lisbon hesitated before speaking. "He's hurt," she finally said. "And he's going to need all of us to help him recover." 


End file.
